The Cosco Busan’s malfunctioning radars should have kept the ship tied up, a San Francisco bar pilot — not the one at the helm when the container ship crashed into a Bay Bridge tower Nov. 7 — told members of Congress on Monday.

Capt. Thomas Hand — a bar pilot with 45 years of professional experience, 17 of which came as a bar pilot in San Francisco — testified during the three-hour congressional field hearing that, hypothetically speaking, radar trouble similar to what is said to have stricken the Cosco Busan would have kept him in port.

Speaking to The Examiner after the hearing, Capt. John Cota, the bar pilot involved in the accident, refused to comment on his colleague’s testimony, only calling Hand his “partner.”

“As this eventually unfolds, people will be surprised at the things that took place,” said Cota, a 26-year veteran of the San Francisco Bar Pilots Association.

Cota, with his attorney, John Meadows, would not comment further on the incident due to the ongoing investigations into the disaster.

In interviews with the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board, Cota has alleged that trouble with the radars before the ship embarked and as it headed toward the Bay Bridge led operators to switch over to an electronic charting system to help guide the vessel through heavy fog.

Questions have been raised about the symbology on the electronic system and whether operators in fact steered toward the bridge’s base when they thought they were bound for safe passage between the two towers.

During the hearing Monday by the House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, U.S. Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Torrance, asked Hand if he would have sailed with similar radar troubles.

While Hand did say that it could depend on where the ship is in its route and that he was “obviously” not on the Cosco Busan at the time, he “would not go.”

The 900-foot ship loaded with cargo and an estimated 1 million gallons of bunker fuel ultimately clipped the base of the Bay Bridge, ripping a gash in the portside and spilling 58,000 gallons of oil into the Bay.

Held at the Presidio, the hearing involved nearly a dozen lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who demanded answers from a number of players regarding the recent disaster.

Pelosi said the “missing piece” was the reason why local officials were kept in the dark by the Coast Guard, state Department of Fish and Game and the private cleanup companies and not included in the initial response.

“What is just mystifying is they knew something, that they suspected something ... that they did not share with others,” Pelosi said.

Pelosi said she would push for an investigation done by the Office of the Inspector General in the Department of Homeland Security into the incident.

Mayor Gavin Newsom said notification about the extent of the accident the day it occurred was frustratingly “lax,” noting that The City was not informed that 58,000 gallons of fuel had spilled into the Bay for more than 12 hours after the collision.

dsmith@examiner.com